Adjusting vertical and horizonal spacing in \stackrel

Question

I have several \stackrel's in my document. See the e.g.:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{stackrel}
\begin{document}
    $\stackrel[\textrm{sand}]{\textrm{A}}{\textrm{B}}$
    $\stackrel[\textrm{wiches.}]{\textrm{C}}{\textrm{D}}$
    $\stackrel[\textrm{E}]{\textrm{rain}}{\textrm{F}}$
    $\stackrel[\textrm{G}]{\textrm{cloud}}{\textrm{H}}$
    $\stackrel[\textrm{I}]{\textrm{J}}{\textrm{snow}}$
    $\stackrel[\textrm{K}]{\textrm{L}}{\textrm{shoe}}$
\end{document}

• How can I adjust the horizontal spaces between each \stackrel such that the longest items from each stackrel are spaced as if they are from the same word (i.e. "sand wich" will appear exactly the same as a typeset "sandwich")?
• How can I adjust the vertical spaces between each layer of the \stackrel's line up (i.e. A, C, rain, cloud, J, and L all appear on the same line)?

Updates:

• (With the above) how can I ensure that lower-case letters with descenders, "q", "y", "p", and "j" still descend properly?

Answer 1

In this specific case, the following answers both your concerns:

• Use % at the end of each \stackrel to avoid a spurious space inserted by the new line (or carriage return) from your editor (you may only want to insert these between the entries you want to "keep together");
• Use \strut in each element to raise the contents to a common level. Note that \strut, defines as \rule[-.3\baselineskip]{0pt}{\baselineskip}, accommodates for regular character descenders by virtue of a large enough depth and height.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{stackrel}% http://ctan.org/pkg/stackrel
\begin{document}
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{3}]{\strut\textrm{1}}{\strut\textrm{2}}$
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{sand}]{\strut\textrm{A}}{\strut\textrm{B}}$%
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{wiches.}]{\strut\textrm{C}}{\strut\textrm{D}}$%
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{E}]{\strut\textrm{rain}}{\strut\textrm{F}}$%
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{G}]{\strut\textrm{cloud}}{\strut\textrm{H}}$%
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{I}]{\strut\textrm{J}}{\strut\textrm{snow}}$%
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{K}]{\strut\textrm{L}}{\strut\textrm{shoe}}$
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{jones}]{\strut\textrm{M}}{\strut\textrm{N}}$%
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{soda}]{\strut\textrm{O}}{\strut\textrm{P}}$%
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{Q}]{\strut\textrm{yams}}{\strut\textrm{R}}$%
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{S}]{\strut\textrm{yummy}}{\strut\textrm{T}}$%
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{U}]{\strut\textrm{V}}{\strut\textrm{gummy}}$%
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{W}]{\strut\textrm{X}}{\strut\textrm{bears}}$
  $\stackrel[\strut\textrm{3}]{\strut\textrm{1}}{\strut\textrm{2}}$
\end{document}​

An alternative, instead of using \stackrel, could just be to insert the contents in a tabular via a macro. Then the (vertical) alignment should be established by default. Here's a minimal example showing how that can be achieved:

\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\stackitem}[3]{%
  \begin{tabular}{@{}c@{}}#1\\#2\\#3\end{tabular}%
}
\begin{document}
  \stackitem{A}{B}{sand}%
  \stackitem{C}{D}{wiches.}%
  \stackitem{rain}{F}{E}%
  \stackitem{cloud}{H}{G}%
  \stackitem{J}{snow}{I}%
  \stackitem{L}{shoe}{K}
\end{document}

You'll notice that this provides the \stackrel functionality in a more convenient form since the order of the specified items follow the sequence they're displayed (left-to-right -> top-down). Also, it doesn't require the mathmode-textmode switching.

If you're interested in a more spread out display, that is easily obtainable by using, for example,

\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{2}%

which stretches out the rows by a factor of 2.